World’s longest bicycle race begins in Moscow

Moscow, July 24 (IANS) The first stage of the Red Bull Trans-Siberian Extreme ultra-stage bicycle race got underway on Tuesday here with an Indian’s participation. The longest bicycle race in the world will consist of 15 stages, from 260 km up to 1,372 km long.

The Trans-Siberian race will take place for the fourth time with six cyclists participating: Vladimir Gusev from Russia, Amit Samarth from India, Marcelo Florentino Soares friom Brazil, Michael Knudsen from Denmark, Patricio Doucet from Spain and Pierre Bischoff from Germany, reports Tass news agency.

The cyclists will cross seven time zones, five climate zones and will ride along the shore of Lake Baikal and along the border with Kazakhstan, Mongolia and China.

The first stage of the race is 314 km long, connecting Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod via the M7 interstate, through the Moscow, Vladimir and Nizhny Novgorod regions.

The competitors will then pass through Kazan, Perm, Yekaterinburg, Tyumen, Omsk, Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk, Irkutsk, Ulan-Ude, Chita, Svobodny and Khabarovsk. The final destination of the race will be reached on August 17 in Vladivostok.

For the second year in a row, the cyclists only enter as solo competitors.

In 2017, 10 competitors from seven countries participated in the bike-a-thon — Russia, Germany, Denmark, Brazil, Ireland, the US and the Philippines. Russian Aleksey Shchebelin came first while Bischoff and Soares finished second and third.